Lovely Recordings

Well thank you for helping me from a digital nothing to finding so much in the streaming word through Tidal. I'm setting up my first hard drive sourced digital music system thanks primarily to your site and help from others. I've been listening to music primarily on vinyl for most of my 50 years so I thought I would share some of the music that moves me with your readers.

This album marked my introduction to jazz. Sure I had heard jazz albums before, but I never connected with them. Of all things, I learned of this album through a reviewer from Israel who was auditioning a system at CES with a track which completely captivated me. It turned out I was listening to Avishai Cohen’s album, Continuo. The track was "Nu Nu".

Here goes: an eclectic mix of music to suit whatever mood I’m in. All of these albums are favorites that have been played to death and I still have yet to tire of them. Music is an important part of my life, always listening to something, whether it’s portable, in the car or the big rig in the dedicated listening room.

When I saw that AudioStream had introduced a new feature named Lovely Recordings, I thought it was a perfect opportunity to introduce some great sounding jazz to folks who may not be big jazz fans but who may enjoy rather mainstream jazz that is both beautifully played and sounds lovely. Some of these artists are well known in jazz in the US, others are not but should be. I have also been fortunate enough to see many of these artists live, which no matter how great the recordings are, live is the best way to experience them. There's nothing like Live!

Lovely recordings can be old or not so old, well-known or not, and by the famous or obscure. Classic to an audiophile may not be the same as classic to a music scholar or to a hipster. Mostly, classic depends on the shared consensus of a certain population. (Doesn’t any definition?) Yeah, there’s more to it, but the purpose of this feature, as far as I'm concerned, is less about linguistics and more about sharing superlative musical recordings whose long-term worthiness can be agreed upon by most who encounter them. How’s that? Rather than defend my choices about what I’ve recognized as classics below, I’ll just say that I like them for the gestalt of their particular lyrical, instrumental, technical, and engineering merits, and predict that most of you will, too. These eight albums are some of my go-tos when I need to scratch a musical itch and don’t want to spend much time searching. May you enjoy and profit from them as much as I do.

Yes, I changed the name from "Classic Recordings" to "Lovely Recordings". 'Classic' implied Classical and that's not what Lovely Recordings is meant to be. What it is meant to be is simply recordings that offer a combination of exceptional music and exceptional sound quality. Great music, great sound. Great, no?

I have a confession to make; near the end of nearly every RMAF, some piece of music played on some system in some room chokes me up to the point of having to hold back tears. I would suggest my reaction has to do with everything including the music and its sound. Three year's ago, it was the "Violin Sonata in G Minor" composed by Claude Debussy as performed by David Abel, violin, and Julie Steinberg, piano, from a DSD transfer in the Wilson/VTL room (see details).